ducktales is teaching me to want things again
I'm almost finished watching the DuckTales reboot. I'm trying to savor these last few episodes by only allowing myself to watch them after every three pages of my comic inked, but my obsession is unrelenting. In lieu of actually watching the show, I spent most of my afternoon yesterday perusing my brand new copy of The Art of DuckTales β specifically the deluxe edition that comes with extended interviews, because I am insane.
I am a comics girl in practice, but an animation girl at heart. My earliest concrete dream job β narrowed down into a real role from more generic dreams like "artist" β was to be an animator. I taught myself how when I was ten, for an animation meme (not Caramelldansen, but close), but never really went anywhere with it.
Ultimately I realized I liked watching cool animations more than I liked trying to make them, so I resigned myself to being an avid enthusiast and turned to comics to satisfy my drive to create.
Comic creation can be as solitary or as social as you want it to be. The accessibility and straightforwardness of comic-making can be a good thing, an empowering thing, and I find that Meredith Gran of the webcomic Octopus Pie says it best:
Nothing in comics is secondary or invisible. No inbetweens, no systems running in the background or just off-screen... there's not even any artwork behind the foreground elements. Every mark is a commitment toward what you see, the final form.
Because of this, a) one person can do it, and b) there is much potential to improvise on the page. This is a recipe for brilliance. [...] The cartoonist can do it all, and they can do it quickly, with no budget. On an individual basis, it is the most empowering medium I have found.
I love this about comics too. You can make a comic with whatever tools you have right now, even just by yourself. You can make a great comic given the exact same circumstances. You can choose to hire assistants, or choose to collaborate with others, but left to your own devices, you could do it yourself β and in not too much time, if you practice enough.
Animation is much harder to totally produce on your own and/or as quickly as you'd like. There are many wonderful indie animation projects by solitary artists, but many of them still necessitate help from voice actors and musicians to achieve their storytelling goal, or from other animators to meet deadlines. See any of the end credits for any CalArts student film (this year's batch β so much good work in here). In most cases, it's a team effort.
The comic creation process suits me better as an artist: My subject matter is very self-indulgent, not to mention that I work on a schedule that would be bothersome to any collaborators. All in all, there's a lot of creative satisfaction in being able to make something of decent quality by myself, for myself.
So it surprised me when the DuckTales book spurred me to start researching careers in animation again. I found myself so moved, reading about all these people β not just the artists, but the writers, producers, composers β coming together to make a show that was larger than anything they could do by themselves, but needed each of their contributions to be as good as it is.
It gave me a new way to look at a medium I loved, and hope for the me who couldn't be an animator but could maybe contribute some other way I just never considered. It felt like my dormant dreams had returned after being sent away, looking different but knocking on the door of my heart as insistently as they did before. Hey! You really wanted this, once upon a time!
I picked out one person β Suzanna Olson, the producer β whose job sounded like something I liked and could learn to do. (I'll never stop drawing, but I am an organizer before I am a person.) I looked for her name on every page and read every word of what she had to say.
I even looked her up on LinkedIn, looked up the other production people she mentioned, tried to see what jobs they had, what they went to school for, what I could do now that remotely resembled those things. My brain jumped to strategizing with an urgency I hadn't seen in a while for a role I wasn't even 100% sure I suited but knew I really, really wanted. It freaked me out, how much I cared.
In recent years, while deciding what sort of career path to take, I'd nixed anything I was passionate about in my free time, for fear of poisoning my love for it. I picked education because it was something I liked and felt strongly about, but nothing I'd bound my soul to from childhood. I could earn a living doing something good, draw on the side, and feel content.
But my god, what happened to caring? What happened to wholeassing it?
Not that I was planning to phone in the very real and important task of assisting in the growth of young minds, but it's just been a while since I was excited like this, gripped by such determination now that I see a place for me in something I absolutely love.
There are a ton of obstacles between me and this pipe dream β both real ones, like the job market, and abstract fears, like being too old for entry-level jobs they usually give to college interns. I'm realistic enough to know I can't drop everything to chase this goal without a bit more planning, if it even gets to that point.
It's tempting to add a disclaimer to this post, like "oh, but I'll forget about this tomorrow," just to alleviate the humiliation of wanting something publicly and perhaps never pursuing it, or worse, pursuing it and not getting it.
But I'm so inspired right now that I'm just going to go ahead and post, if only to have something to look back on in the future, a snapshot of a feeling I thought I left behind for good β a reminder that these things come back. Isn't that grand?
The Moon Theme of the Ducktales video game, which they use in the 2017 show as well β in a funny way and in a (spoilers!) tearjerking, sweet way. But the original just makes you wanna get up and DO SHIT, so it's what I'm attaching.
(My posts have been really long lately... Sorry! I've clearly been thinking a lot about things. I will try to be less insane next time.)